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LENDING

Wells exec to run Prosper

Stephan Vermut, picked by Wells Fargo & Co. to help run a business catering to hedge funds after the bank bought his firm, has resigned to run peer-to-peer lender Prosper Marketplace Inc.

Vermut, who sold Merlin Securities to Wells Fargo in August, was named chief executive officer Tuesday, San Francisco's Prosper said.

He will be joined by Wells Fargo's Ron Suber, also a Merlin veteran. Vermut's son Aaron Vermut, also at Wells Fargo, will join Prosper after a transition period.

Prosper, founded in 2006, runs an online marketplace that matches individual investors with borrowers who get loans for as much as $25,000 to pay off credit-card bills, consolidate debt and take vacations.

COMPUTERS

New Surface coming Feb. 9

Microsoft said Tuesday that its Surface tablet computer running the new Windows 8 Pro software will be available Feb. 9, the first versions of the machine powered by chips from Intel Corp.

Surface Windows 8 Pro, which runs on an Intel Core i5 processor, will go on sale in the U.S. and Canada starting at $899, the company said. It will be available with 64 or 128 gigabytes of memory.

An earlier iteration of Surface that contains a chip with ARM Holdings technology went on sale in October for $499 to $699. Microsoft hasn't disclosed how many it has sold of that version, called Surface Windows RT.

BIOTECH

Impax falls on FDA move

Shares of Impax Laboratories Inc. fell the most in more than two months after the company failed to win U.S. approval for an extended-release formulation of a Parkinson's disease drug used to relieve spasms in patients.

Impax shares tumbled 7.2 percent to $19.53 Tuesday, after dropping as low as $18.90 for the company's largest intraday decline since Oct. 31. Shares of the Hayward company increased 4.9 percent in the 12 months that ended Jan. 18.

The Food and Drug Administration requires a reinspection of a plant involved in the development of the medicine called Rytary, which combines standard Parkinson's medications in a new sustained release formula, Impax said.

INVESTING

The California Public Employees' Retirement System is expected to top a record $260 billion in assets, the market value it held before the global financial crisis wiped out more than a third of its wealth, by sticking with a strategy of buy-and-hold.

The largest U.S. public pension, with half of its money in publicly traded equities, was worth $253.2 billion on Jan. 17, about 97 percent of the pre-recession high set in October 2007. The fund returned 13 percent in 2012, about the same gain as the Standard & Poor's 500 index achieved.

CalPERS isn't alone in nearing previous high marks. The 100 largest public pensions in the U.S. had $2.9 trillion in assets in the fourth quarter of 2007, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

That dropped to $2 trillion in 2009 and rebounded to almost $2.8 trillion as of Sept. 30.